


Poetic Unreason

by ishafel



Category: Regeneration - Pat Barker
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 15:59:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rivers succumbs to curiosity.  Yuletide 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetic Unreason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Argyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/gifts).



Rivers is never sure how it happens, but he's noticed that that's how things work with Siegfried. He can make you say and do and even believe things you never meant to. He can convince a pacifist to take up arms, a decorated soldier to lay them down. And even knowing this, even knowing how dangerous and delinquent and insane it is, Rivers has allowed Siegfried to charm him into bed. 

He should get up, should wash and dress and go before Siegfried wakes up and persuades him into something even worse. Rivers wonders, half amused, half despairing, what could be worse than sodomy is. What could be more degenerate? Graves wrote to tell him that Siegfried's latest flirtation is with socialism, foolhardy at best and a betrayal of his class at worst. But he knows that Siegfried's bent on self-destruction; he's known that since they met.

This is the first time he's had the urge to join him. The sheets are crisp, cool under his bare skin. Siegfried's breathing is steady, even, his sleep untroubled. The moonlight streaming through the open curtains is bright enough to read by; it makes him seems impossibly young to Rivers, impossibly golden, muscled, and beautiful.

Rivers is fifty-six, old enough to know just how foolish, how ridiculous he's been. All those years of careful, strict celibacy, of not even letting his eyes stray, thrown away. And for what? He has no illusions that Siegfried will be faithful to him, any more than he was faithful to Owen, to any of the others. Siegfried is faithful to his ideals his words, to beauty and to poetry, not to people. If they're caught they could be prosecuted. Rivers would certainly lose his job; St. John's, kind as they've been, couldn't overlook something like this. Not only his job, which he loves, but his professional reputation, the friendship of the officers and patients he treated during the war, his relationships with the science students he's mentored since.

It would be a god-awful price to pay for a single night with a man he does not even always like. He puts up a hand to touch what feels like a bite mark on his neck. It is a bite mark, and it hurts. He'd be angrier, except that he can see bruises darkening on Siegfried's shoulders, and he knows that he was the one to put them there. His whole body aches a little; he's too old for passion like this, too old to be so careless.

When he'd arranged to meet Siegfried at the Savoy for a drink--and it hardly seemed possible that had only been a few hours ago--he hadn't imagined this would happen. Hadn't imagined it was even possible. He'd known what Siegfried was, of course; it was the worst-kept secret in England. But because he didn't think of himself that way, it hadn't occurred to him that Siegfried might. He'd truly meant to have a drink and go home to bed, alone.

A man with Rivers' experience as an anthropologist and psychiatrist ought to have seen Siegfried's seduction for what it was. There hadn't been any trickery, no extraordinary technique. Only Siegfried, leaning a little closer than usual as he told a joke, using his hands for emphasis and finishing with one on Rivers' shoulder. Only Siegfried's hip, pressing close against Rivers': nothing remarkable or exceptional, nothing so exaggerated that Rivers would have felt it necessary to tell him to stop, or even felt uncomfortable. 

But somehow when the bar closed and they went stumbling outside into the dark, drunk less on liquor than on conversation, they climbed into the same cab. Siegfried had put his hand on Rivers' thigh, and Rivers had let him, though by then he'd known very well what Siegfried was about. He'd listened and agreed to Siegfried's stammered offer of a last drink. He'd followed Siegfried up the dimly lit, narrow stairs, taken the glass of whiskey from him and felt their fingers brush.

It had all seemed natural enough, simple and beautiful and exactly what Rivers wanted. It had never occurred to him to say no. Now, lying in Siegfried's strange bed, watching the other man sleep, he wonders why. What is it about Siegfried that convinced him, this time, to set his scruples--and more than that, his common sense--aside? What is it about Siegfried that made this seem, not a sin, not a crime, but poetry, the fullest expression of friendship?

Rivers has made up his mind, already, that it is not something he can allow to happen again. He does not dwell on the fact that he should never have allowed it to begin with. He cannot bring himself to regret it. Instead, he sets himself to remembering it, because he knows that it will have to last him.

Siegfried's hands, hard and calloused, gentle as they came up to cup Rivers' chin. Siegfried's mouth, soft and demanding on Rivers', and not only on his mouth but on his neck, the hollows of his throat and shoulders, softer still as it made its way down Rivers' stomach, following the trail his hands had blazed. And Siegfried's body had been both hard and soft beneath Rivers' own hands, willing, yielding, quiescent. Rivers had so little experience for an old man, so little basis for comparison. But he did not think anything could have compared to the experience of pushing himself into Siegfried.

It had felt like victory, like curing the most challenging of patients, like coming home. Rivers imagined that it was very like the way his soldiers had felt, returning from the war. As if the world had changed in their absence, become suddenly brighter, more complex, faster-moving. 

It is still with him, this heady, half-drunk feeling of possibility, of newness. He has been so careful, for so long. Kept himself apart, kept himself pure. For the first time, he realizes exactly what he's missed. He cannot go back and live his life again--he would not, even if he could--but he is grateful to have had this window, this one night, to see what might have been. 

His eyes are heavy. He traces a finger lightly over Siegfried's bruised and scarred back, and promises himself he'll sleep for an hour, two at the most, before he goes back to who he is.


End file.
